Talk:List of Durham University people

Untitled
It would be good to have a uniform style in referring to the colleges. Some entries have 'Castle', 'Mary's', etc., while others have the more formal 'St Mary's'. I believe this should be standardised on the more formal names, although it may be less confusing if an exception were made for University College. What do others think?

On a related point, should 'Ustinov' replace 'GradSoc' for students who studied there under the old name?

Robminchin 18:22, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure; many of them were 'Grad Soc' on the original page, but I replace with Ustinov. To be fair though, if we're calling Newcastle 'Armstrong' then Ustinov could be Grad Soc. As for the names; we could have the first, linked name, formally and then have the others as they are now Robdurbar 18:45, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Archbishop Drexel Gomez
Should the Archbishop Drexel Gomez not be on this page. Thought I would ask before going ahead and doing it.


 * Yep - if anyone's missing its through pure ignorance, not any lack of quality in the person!Robdurbar 11:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Charles Thorp
I was very suprised that Charles Thorp is missing (indeed there was no article at all), given his crucial role in both the foundation of the university and Castle's early days. Still, I have created an article although it's not up to a great standard. Information is sadly lacking around the Internet. I came to know him through his connections with my hometown of Ryton first before I was aware of his role at the university, so I suppose his exclusion is understanble. I may be back soon to add more to the article, once I have read a few local history books. Just want to draw everyone's attention to it, in case anyone else has anything to add to it.hedpeguyuk 20:52, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Redlinks
As this page could be very large if every individual were included is it worth including people not notable enough to have their own pages? I have deleted all redlinked entries and left this section for discussion. SPACKlick (talk) 10:02, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Columns
Can we possibly remove the columns, it makes the page very hard to read on a small screen, especially when there are images in the column. Wonder what your thoughts are? Aloneinthewild (talk) 19:20, 10 June 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm no fan of columns and would be happy to see them go. Particularly in the current configuration where they make editing sub-sections difficult. Robminchin (talk) 23:38, 10 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Happy to remove--bogle (talk) 16:49, 11 June 2017 (UTC)Bogle

Ed Gamble
This Palatinate article indicates that Ed Gamble's college was Hatfield, not Cuth's: https://www.palatinate.org.uk/ed-gamble-from-hatfield-to-hammersmith-apollo/. The article even includes quotes from Gamble himself on the college. Paulbuckingham (talk) 02:47, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Well noticed, could you update that and the college pages? It seems it is not sourced at the moment. Aloneinthewild (talk) 18:18, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Done, thanks. Paulbuckingham (talk) 03:22, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion: You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:22, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Thom Brooks.jpg

Removal of references
It appears that almost all the references have been removed from this article. This seems most peculiar, as it is a standard part of Wikipedia to provide references and that unreferenced information can be deleted. Please do not delete the references. Robminchin (talk) 04:56, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Fellows of the Royal Society
Is there any particular reason why we have a seperate section for Fellows of the Royal Society? I understand membership of this body is prestigious but don't see why entries who are fellows should be split off into their own section. Anyway, I don't want to remove it if other editors feel there is a good reason for keeping. Perhaps a compromise would be to assign entries in this section to other appropriate parts of the list but keep the FRS postnom after the name of each entry? --Leonstojka (talk) 09:08, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

"Associated with Durham University"
The list includes not just alumni but former staff members as well, but I would argue that because we do not have a strong definition of what being associated with Durham University means, there are a lot of entries with a tenuous connection at best, e.g. people who worked at Durham for 2/3 years at the start of their careers without doing anything noteworthy at the time (Graham Savage is a good example). Should we be a bit more strict with non-alumni entries from now on?

I won't change anything without input from other editors and would be particularly interested in hearing from those who have contributed to this page and other durham related articles before (like and  and so on) --Leonstojka (talk) 20:20, 30 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Savage's connection certainly seems pretty tenuous (although the complete lack of references on his article makes it rather hard to tell). But an academic who spends three years as a postdoc at the university would have spent as long there as most undergraduates (actually longer, as they would be there all summer) and at a highly formative stage of their career. Even if there is nothing 'noteworthy' accomplished during that time, the building blocks for future notability may be being laid (most alumni could hardly be said to have done much that was noteworthy during their time as students for that matter). It's going to be hard to come up with objective criteria that define at what stage someone is considered to be 'associated'. Robminchin (talk) 00:56, 1 August 2021 (UTC)